Tips to Looking Professional Online

Being professional might be obvious to you, but to some people who start their own business, professionalism isn’t second nature. Here’s some of our top tips to make sure you’re looking tip top online.

Use a Branded Public Facing Email Address

This is a big one that a lot people simply overlook. Make sure you have an email address to match your company brand. There’s nothing more off-putting to prospective customers than a 3rd party email address. Gmail, AOL, BT, Mail.com – etc. while all very good email services, I’m sure. They’re no good for a professional image and should only be used for personal email accounts.

bigboy18@gmail.com is the web equivalent of showing up to the customers house in your pyjamas. bob@plumbingbarrow.co.uk is good for Bob, a sole trading plumber. If you’re a larger company, you may choose something less personal and more professional such as hello@yourcompany.co.uk, for example.

Respond to Correspondence Quickly

Is there anything worse than waiting days to hear back from an enquiry? If you take too long to respond to your customers, they may have already moved on to another company. One that values their time and wants to serve them. Try to set up your email to notify you every time you receive one, or integrate your emails with external services such as Slack or Trello to file them all in one, easy to check place each day.

Be professional and courteous when responding to prospective customers, it should go without saying really.

A Mobile Friendly Website is Not Optional

The world we now live in, is dominated by mobile devices. If your website doesn’t respond well on mobile devices and tablets, you will lose customers. Check out Google’s mobile-friendly audit tool to test your own websites mobile speed and optimisation. If you need to make your site mobile responsive, take a look at Bootstrap or, give us a call and we’ll get a quote to you for a design from us. Alternatively, read more about our web design here.

Use Social Networks to your Advantage

Billions of people are on Facebook. If your business is not, you’re missing out on some prime-time coverage. The first port of call for many people these days is social media. So try and build a presence on as many social networks as you can. That’s not to say all of them. Your industry will determine which social media networks will work best for you. If your business is media focused and relies heavily on video, you’d choose YouTube and Facebook and probably Instagram too. If your business is more of a text, image based setup you might choose Instagram, Pinterest and Tumblr. Be smart with your choices, think about the audience you are targeting and where they are likely to be.